The Kamchatka Peninsula (Russian: полуо́стров Камча́тка, poluostrov Kamchatka) is a 1,250-kilometre-long (780 mi)peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about 270,000 km2 (100,000 sq mi).It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west.Immediately offshore along the Pacific coast of the peninsula runs the 10,500-metre (34,400 ft) deep Kuril–Kamchatka Trench.
The Kamchatka Peninsula, the Commander Islands, and Karaginsky Island constitute the Kamchatka Krai of the Russian Federation. The vast majority of the 322,079 inhabitants are Russians, but there are also about 13,000 Koryaks (2014).More than half of the population lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (179,526 people in 2010) and nearby Yelizovo (38,980).
The Kamchatka peninsula contains the volcanoes of Kamchatka, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Irkutsk (Russian: Иркутск; IPA: [ɪrˈkutsk]) is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, and one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: 587,891 (2010 Census)
Geography
The city proper lies on the Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei, 72 kilometers (45 mi) below its outflow from Lake Baikal and on the bank opposite the suburb of Glaskovsk. The river, 580-meter (1,900 ft) wide, is crossed by the Irkutsk Hydroelectric Dam and three other bridges downstream.
The Irkut River, from which the town takes its name, is a smaller river that joins the Angara directly opposite the city. The main portion of the city is separated from several landmarks—the monastery, the fort and the port, as well as its suburbs—by another tributary, the Ida (or Ushakovka) River. The two main parts of Irkutsk are customarily referred to as the «left bank» and the «right bank», with respect to the flow of the Angara River.
Mount Elbrus (Russian: Эльбру́с, tr. El’brus; IPA: [ɪlʲˈbrus]; Karachay-Balkar: Минги тау, Miñi taw, IPA: [miŋŋi taw] is adormant volcano located in the western Caucasus mountains, in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia of Russia, near the border with Georgia. Mt. Elbrus’s peak is the highest in the Caucasus Mountains and in Europe.
Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. Mt. Elbrus (west summit) stands at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft); the east summit is slightly lower at 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower of the two summits was first ascended on 10 July 1829 (Julian calendar) by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachay guide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led byGeneral Emmanuel, and the higher (by about 20 m—70 ft) in 1874 by an English expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais.
While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe as its highest mountain.
The Manpupuner rock formations (Man-Pupu-Nyer; Мань-Пупу-нёр) or the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations or Poles of the Komi Republic are a set of 7 gigantic abnormally shaped stone pillars located west of the Ural mountains in the Troitsko-Pechorsky District of the Komi Republic. These monoliths are around 30 to 42 m high and jut out of a hilly plateau formed through the weathering effects of ice and winds.
According to a local legend, the stone pillars were once an entourage of Samoyeds giants walking through the mountains to Siberia in order to destroy the Mansi people. However, upon seeing the holy Mansi mountains, the shaman of the giants dropped his drum and the entire team froze into the stone pillars.
Deemed one of the Seven Wonders of Russia, the Manpupuner rock formations are a very popular attraction in Russia, though not well known internationally and relatively unspoiled by tourism.[1] Their height and abnormal shapes supposedly made the top of these rock giants inaccessible even to experienced rock-climbers, but Stefan Glowacz climbed at least one of them in 2013.
The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собор Василия Блаженного), commonly known as Saint Basil’s Cathedral, is a church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Russian: Собор Покрова пресвятой Богородицы, что на Рву) or Pokrovsky Cathedral(Russian: Покровский собор).It was built from 1555–61 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazanand Astrakhan. A world famous landmark it was the city’s tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, as happens to all churches in Byzantine Christianity, was popularly known as the «Jerusalem» and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sundayparade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the tsar.
The building is shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no analogues in Russian architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that «it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to fifteenth century … a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design.» The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.
As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union’s anti-theist campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely and forcefully secularized in 1929 and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.It is often mislabelled as the Kremlin owing to its location on Red Square in immediate proximity of the Kremlin.
Petergof (Russian: Петерго́ф) or Peterhof (German and Dutch for «Peter’s Court»), known as Petrodvorets (Петродворец) from 1944 to 1997, is a municipal town in Petrodvortsovy District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, located on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. Population: 73,199 (2010 Census); 64,791 (2002 Census); 81,525 (1989 Census).
The town hosts one of two campuses of Saint Petersburg State University and the Petrodvorets Watch Factory, one of the leading Russian watch manufactures. A series of palaces and gardens, laid out on the orders of Peter the Great, and sometimes called the «Russian Versailles», is also situated there. The palace-ensemble along with the city center is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Palaces, fountains, and gardens
The dominant natural feature of Peterhof Grand Palace is a sixteen-meter-high bluff lying less than a hundred meters from the shore. The so-called Lower Gardens (Nizhny Sad), at 1.02 square kilometers (0.39 sq mi) comprising the better part of the palace complex land area, are confined between this bluff and the shore, stretching east and west for roughly 200 meters (660 ft). The majority of Peterhof’s fountains are contained here, as are several small palaces and outbuildings. East of the Lower Gardens lies the Alexandria Park with 19th-century Gothic Revival structures such as the Gothic Chapel.
Atop the bluff, near the middle of the Lower Gardens, stands the Grand Palace (Bolshoy Dvorets). To the south of it are the comparatively small Upper Gardens (Verhny Sad). Upon the bluff’s face below the Palace is the Grand Cascade (Bolshoy Kaskad). This and the Grand Palace are the centerpiece of the entire complex. At its foot begins the Sea Channel (Morskoy Kanal), one of the most extensive waterworks of the Baroque period, which bisects the Lower Gardens.
Mamayev Kurgan (Russian: Мамаев Курган) is a dominant height overlooking the city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in Southern Russia. The name in Russian means «tumulus of Mamai»
The formation is dominated by a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle was a hard-fought Soviet victory over Axis forces on the Eastern front of World War II and arguably the bloodiest battle in human history.At the time of its installation in 1967 the statue named The Motherland Calls formed the largest free-standing sculpture in the world,now it is the tallest sculpture of a woman in the world
The Valley of Geysers (Russian: Долина гейзеров) is a geyser field on Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, and has the second largest concentration of geysers in the world. This 6 km (3.7 mi) long basin with approximately ninety geysers and many hot springs is situated on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, predominantly on the left bank of the ever-deepening Geysernaya River, into which geothermal waters flow from a relatively young stratovolcano, Kikhpinych. Temperatures have been found to be 250 °C, 500 m below thecaldera ground.It is part of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, which, in turn, is incorporated into the World Heritage Site «Volcanoes of Kamchatka». The valley is difficult to reach, with helicopters providing the only feasible means of transport.
Lake Baikal (Russian: о́зеро Байка́л, tr. Ozero Baykal; IPA: [ˈozʲɪrə bɐjˈkal]; Buryat: Байгал нуур, Mongolian: Байгал нуур, Baygal nuur, meaning «nature lake») is a rift lake in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast.
Lake Baikal is the largest (by volume) freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world’s unfrozen surface fresh water, and at 1,642 m (5,387 ft),the deepest. It is also among the clearest of all lakes, and thought to be the world’s oldest lake at 25 million years. It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area. With 23,615.39 cubic kilometres (5,700 cubic miles) of fresh water, it contains more water than that of all the Great Lakes combined.
Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of 31,722 km2 (12,248 sq mi). Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world[and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is also home to Buryat tribes who reside on the eastern side of Lake Baikal, rearing goats, camels, cattle, and sheep, where the mean temperature varies from a winter minimum of −19 °C (−2 °F) to a summer maximum of 14 °C (57 °F).
